Medical technicians can keep their pasts hidden

Associated Press

Published 8:59 pm, Tuesday, August 14, 2012

CONCORD, N.H. — Radiology technician David Kwiatkowski was a few weeks into a temporary job at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center-Presbyterian in 2008 when a co-worker accused him of lifting a syringe containing a painkiller from an operating room and sticking it down his pants.

More syringes were found in his pockets and locker. A test showed he had fentanyl and other opiates in his system.

In what may be the scariest part of all, authorities say that when he swiped the fentanyl syringe, he left another in its place, filled with a dummy fluid, ready to be used on a patient.

But Kwiatkowski did not go to jail. No one in Pittsburgh even called the police. Neither the hospital nor the medical staffing agency that placed him in the job informed the national accreditation organization for radiological technicians.

So just days after being fired, he was able to start a new job at a Baltimore hospital. And from there, he went from one hospital to another — 10 hospitals altogether in the four years after he was fired in Pittsburgh.

All of them said they had no knowledge of his disciplinary history.

The potentially grave cost of those loopholes became clear only after Kwiatkowski's arrest last month in New Hampshire, where he stands accused of infecting at least 31 Exeter Hospital patients with hepatitis C by stealing fentanyl syringes and replacing them with dirty ones tainted with his blood.

Now, thousands of hospital patients who may have crossed paths with Kwiatkowski in eight states — Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York and Pennsylvania — are being tested to see if they, too, are infected with hepatitis C, a sometimes life-threatening virus that can destroy the liver and cause cancer.

As the Kwiatkowski case demonstrates, medical technicians aren't as closely regulated as doctors or nurses, and there is no nationwide database of misconduct or disciplinary actions against them.

“It seems that what happens in Pittsburgh stays in Pittsburgh,” said Barbara Yeninas, a spokeswoman for Springboard Healthcare Staffing and Search, one of at least seven medical staffing agencies that lined up jobs for Kwiatkowski. “They get hired and they get fired and they can move on to wherever else they want.”

As Kwiatkowski made his way from one institution to another, the Pittsburgh incident was not even the only time he was accused of stealing drugs and fired.

Since 2003

Kwiatkowski, 33, became a radiology technician in 2003 in his home state of Michigan after completing a training program. He earned a degree two years later from Madonna University in Livonia, where he was a catcher on the baseball team and became one of the small school's all-time leaders in two inglorious categories: passed balls and steals allowed.

Former teammate Mario D'Herin said Kwiatkowski was regarded as a liar. At one point, he claimed to have cancer.

“Then he said it was Crohn's disease, and it was like the boy who cried wolf — nobody really believed him,” D'Herin said.

Kwiatkowski's parents told investigators their son had problems with alcohol, anger and depression.

They also believed he had Crohn's disease, a painful bowel condition sometimes treated with fentanyl patches.

Through jail officials, Kwiatkowski declined to be interviewed. His court-appointed lawyer would not comment. Nor would his mother in Canton Township, Mich.

Kwiatkowski has pleaded not guilty to stealing drugs and tampering with needles in New Hampshire. He told investigators he was innocent and suggested that a co-worker had planted a fentanyl syringe found in his car.

Stolen syringe

People involved in a 2010 incident at Arizona Heart Hospital tell a different story. Kwiatkowski was 10 days into a job assignment when a co-worker found him passed out in a bathroom stall. A stolen syringe, bearing a label for fentanyl, floated in the toilet. In the emergency room, he tested positive for both cocaine and marijuana.

This time police were summoned, but the officers decided not to file charges or even write up a report after being told that Kwiatkowski had flushed the syringe. “We had no evidence. We had nothing except what they told us,” said Phoenix Officer James Holmes, a police spokesman.

But after learning police hadn't filed charges, the national accreditation group dropped its inquiry without ever speaking to anyone at the hospital or the state licensing board, said a spokesman, Christopher Cook.

Just days after Kwiatkowski's firing, he landed a new job filling in for striking technicians at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia. He faxed a handwritten note to Arizona licensing officials from a Philadelphia airport hotel saying he would surrender his license rather than fight the accusations.

If Kwiatkowski had been a doctor, that loss of his Arizona license would have jeopardized his ability to work anywhere in the U.S. But in this case, he had nothing to worry about.

Like many other states, Pennsylvania doesn't require most radiological technicians to be registered and doesn't maintain records of disciplinary actions against them.

He soon moved on to other hospitals.

Hospitals and the staffing agencies that routinely help them fill jobs are supposed to share responsibility for verifying that workers have proper licensing and good reputations. But four of the states where Kwiatkowski worked over the full course of his career — New Hampshire, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan — don't even license radiology workers.